I would remind you that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in defense of justice is no virtue.

Friday, April 17, 2009

The Tea Party

I'm Mad as a Hatter and I'm not going to take it anymore! Wait, there's something really wrong with that sentence...Oh, I see! I am going to take it. Lots of it. All the time. More and more. Does that sound a little cynical? After all I'm a proud attendee of a Tea Party, one of the many protests against the creeping cancer of Obamunism that has made us forget the maddening bureaucrat who ran the government just a few months ago.

I never appreciated one of W's stronger qualities. He didnt cut the size of government. In fact it grew enormously under his stewardship. But he was pretty good at running that big, huge monstrosity. The actual screw-ups were few and when they popped up they were dealt with pretty effectively. Bush never overestimated what could or could not be done. Its telling that the greatest 'screw-up' of the Bush Administration was more of a public-relations defeat than an instance of actual incompetence. If you compare the Feds actions during Hurricane Katrina to the State Of Louisiana, run by the hopelessly incompetent Kathleen Blanco; or if you view the complete disintegration of the New Orleans city government and take note of the craven, cowardly behavior of its mayor and many of the members of its police and fire departments you'd have to admit that the Fed's initial paralysis, quickly overcome with the arrival of the military, was mild by comparison.

Bush didnt come off the rails until the financial dominoes started falling. His descent into Keynesianistic check-mailing was the first time he utterly abandoned any kind of conservatism and openly pursued liberal policies. His former liberal actions (immigration, education) were taken because these issues were being pushed hard in the media and by powerful political players. Bush didnt want to fight the trend and lose; he'd rather be part of a crappy deal after he had blunted the worst aspects of it in a compromise. But the check-mailing was no compromise with the liberals. Bush thought of it and pushed it. He hired Henry Paulsen (a Democrat) and worked on the bank bailout. There were alternatives, the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley mark-to-market accounting rules and the creation of liquidity by the Fed but I think Bush did the only politically possible thing he thought he could do.

But now we are in the hands of different people. Their fumbling, patently dishonest statements peg them as ideologues with absolutely no managerial skill at all. The gangsters in the legislature treat the Obama hippies with the contempt they deserve, sending up bills for President LePetomane to sign lustily as his Hedly Lamar-like Axelrod stands leering on the sidelines. Thinly-veiled contempt is what Obama gets from the majority of the world's leaders, appalled at grandstanding Barry's lack of gravitas. Ditto from the Somali pirates in their safe, unbombed pirate lairs. Everybody who deals with this clown comes away scratching their heads.

The freak-show claque of screwballs Barry has picked as Cabinet heads seem to be competing for who can say the dumbest, most offensively outrageous thing in front of a TV camera. Is Janet Napolitano doing as good a job at the HSA as she did governing Arizona? What moronities will The Smartest Woman In The Universe over at State utter next? Could Eric Holder be any more glassy-eyed and Orwellian? He's like the Trotsky of the Obama Revolution. Timothy Geithner's inept actions have sparked a panic to dump dollars at the same time he's peddling two trillion dollars of worthless bonds. And the beloved VP, Slow-Joe Biden, the man whose chia-pet-like plug-job is an inspiration to Hair Club members everywhere; what of his many weird statements? Every time he breaks loose from the well-guarded estate where he has been attending to extremely important business at the behest of Barry, the Bide-Man finds a camera and proves that he is by far the dumbest idiot who ever threatened to become president. The living, breathing argument against any of Janet Napolitano's angry returning veterans aiming their laser-guided weapons in Barry's direction. This is not a group that exudes managerial competence. The Chinese are frightened and appalled enough to be worried about their stash of dollars and not very receptive to buying any of the new bond issues that are being floated. There certainly arent hundreds of Chinese illegal immigrants donating to Barry the way they did with Hillary.

So if everyone else in the world, or should I say everybody in the world who doesnt watch Oprah and The Daily Show or read People Magazine, has a sneering contempt of Obamunism and sees it for the con that it is, why, when a few flag-waving conservatives gather on some windy, cold street corners to protest the direction in which things are going, are we labeled extremist nuts? Is Sarkozy an extremist nut? The entire British press corps? Well, I'm not either. I just see what is obvious.

Now some of my fellow demonstrators definitely fit into the high-fiber definition. Is abolishing the income-tax or the Federal Reserve a politically viable position at the moment? No, its crazy talk. So is fervent opposition to abortion. You can argue these things until you are blue in the face but the fact remains that they are completely politically impossible at this time and saying them loudly, as though they are the main point isolates you politically. And if these are your only issues, if the present danger doesnt make you want to sublimate them and fight for the survival of our most basic economic and political freedoms then you are as useless as any Earth Day-worshiping liberal. There was an odd assortment of Ron Paulians and people with over-the-top political obsessions present but most of the people in that windy plaza were just regular types, frightened by what they see coming. A surprising number of young people.

The sense that I felt from the Tea Party I attended in the giant government complex in Van Nuys was that we had to get together to stop the things that are happening now, not yell about pie-in-the-sky issues that are decades away from resolution. If we dont all drop our little personal agendas and just work to oppose the people who now have almost total power those other issues will become meaningless. As it is we are faced with a government which is about to embark on one of the greatest social engineering schemes in world history. They are going to fix the weather. I dont say that with any sense of satire or irony, that is exactly what they plan to do. What has happened in the last two months is nothing. The EPA has announced today that dozens of chemicals are 'greenhouse gases that are threats to human health'. They dont need any legislation or action from the executive branch to begin the crusade against your car, your refrigerator, your air-conditioner, your job, your way of life.

The courts will mandate that these Evil, Greedy Corporations stop releasing Greenhouse Gas and impose punitive damages to be collected by greedy lawyers and New Age non-profit foundations. The courts will rule your car unconstitutional. The courts have now reached the point where they can rule anything they want and that ruling has the effect of law. The Constitution has become malleable in the hands of these leftists and has lost all its meaning. They can now invoke the EPA finding and close every fossil-fuel-burning power plant in the country. The feeble, expensive stream of windmill and solar-panel generated electricity into your house will be enough to run a few dim, mercury-filled, hazardous light bulbs and your computer (which will also be your TV set, phone, link with the world). Do you think I'm kidding? You think these hippies are going to let you keep that chloro-fluorocarbon-filled refrigerator which is writing a death-warrant for polar bears and melting the polar ice caps? Think again, Amigo.

The people at the Tea Party, from the crazies to the average folks who were there, could quote the liberal's rhetoric very accurately. It was a nice crowd but there werent any newbies. These were all hard-core anti government, anti-liberals. It was like the Peace Movement in 1966. The masses hadnt caught on and so everyone had the same sense of purpose in the face of what looked like overwhelming odds. Everyone I talked to had a level of awareness that was very satisfying to me. They all knew that spending trillions of dollars on absolute nonsense would wreck the currency. They all knew that the State Of California didnt have a prayer to avoid fiscal calamity. They knew that these genius's ludicrous attempt to influence the weather was a pathway to serfdom and poverty. It was like being around old friends. No one needed to say very much. The Present Danger was apparent to all.

But can the juggernaut be stopped? Not with this crowd. Not in this political system. The system will fail on its own and then we are in tremendous danger. Democracy is not working. The legislators of both parties are too prone to handing out goodies to their friends, the lifetime judges have become enamored of imposing their social theories on us peasants from the bench, the permanent bureaucracy has a mind and life of its own. There isno controlling legal authority. When the sheet hits the fan the frightened population will dump what remains of its freedom looking for easy answers; the election of these Democrats proves that. A man on a horse will emerge to pick up the pieces.

As I left the Tea Party I rode home on The Orange Line, part of a giant tens of billions of dollars mass transit boondoggle that was designed to peaceably separate Angelenos from their beloved automobiles. An expensive failure. The only Angelenos that were riding it when I did were Spanish-speaking folks who came to this country because here, if you work hard and get a little bit ahead, you can buy yourself a car. Too late fellas! Los coches son el mal. (Cars are evil.)